With the ultimate gesture in giving back to the U of T Engineering community, CivMin alumnus Donovan Pollitt (MinE 0T4) has established a scholarship in memory of his late father, alumnus Murray H. Pollitt (MechE 6T3). The new Murray H. Pollitt Engineering Leadership Scholarship is an annual award for upper-year undergraduate students who share the qualities his father most admired: entrepreneurial drive, practical skills and a belief that engineers can build something that matters.
Murray earned his mechanical engineering degree from the University of Toronto in 1963. He went on to become one of the most distinctive figures in Canadian mining — a man who built gold mines in Ontario and Quebec, founded a Bay Street brokerage, and spent decades advocating for the Canadian companies and industries he believed in. But for those who knew him, what tied it all together was something he firmly believed: Canada needs more engineers to grow its economy.
It was a conviction he carried throughout his formal career into the weekends he spent with his children. Now, 14 years after his passing in 2012, that conviction has taken permanent form.
Donovan explains his motivation in founding the memorial scholarship.
“I was thinking of my dad, one of the biggest boosters of the engineering program throughout his life, who always felt Canada could always use more engineers,” he says.
“It always felt that way; engineers are practical people. They’re company builders, they’re innovators, they’re all these things that the Canadian economy needs. The idea of having a scholarship, to encourage more kids to pursue engineering, was very much paying tribute to his legacy.”
From the engine lab to the gold mine
Murray’s path from mechanical engineering to gold mining started with a summer job working on Euclid trucks at Iron Ore Company of Canada. Witnessing the scale of the operations gave him something rare on Bay Street in the 1960s: technical fluency in how mining operations worked.
That grounding in engineering is what gave him the confidence, beginning in the mid-1970s, to begin building a mining company. What followed was nearly four decades of persistent company building — the Joubi Mine in Quebec, the Eagle River Mine near Wawa, Ont., the Edwards Mine, the Mishi Mine, and eventually acquiring the Kiena Mine in Val d’Or, Que. By the time those companies were merged into Wesdome Gold Mines Ltd., Murray had put mines into production, employed hundreds of Canadians in both provinces, and built a company that today carries a market capitalization of over $4 billion.
Through it all, Murray maintained that his engineering degree was not a credential but a toolkit through which he saw the industry.
Engineers build things — all kinds of things
Murray’s belief in engineering extended well beyond mining. In the early 1970s, alongside his U of T classmate and lifelong friend Ronald Near — also a U of T mechanical engineering graduate — he co-founded Toronto Stamp Inc., a manufacturing business that became a lasting enterprise in the Greater Toronto Area. The two met in their university years and shared a conviction that Canada’s strength lay in building real things: companies, products and resources. The friendship, forged in the engineering program at U of T, produced a partnership enduring for decades.
Murray went on to co-found two more manufacturing ventures — AS&G Lettering Systems Inc. and Permark Inc. — with Near and other partners. These were not mining companies, but reflected the same instinct: an engineer with entrepreneurial drive could identify a need and build something around it. For Murray, mining and manufacturing were two expressions of the same fundamental idea. Canada had resources, Canada had talent, and Canada needed builders.
Passing it on: the driveway, the engine lab and a career in mining
From an early age, Murray made the world of mechanical things visible and exciting for his children, whether that meant rebuilding a two-stroke engine in the driveway on a weekend or, on one memorable occasion, a trip to the engine lab in the mechanical engineering building at U of T.
Building on humble professional origins, with his first summer job helping geologists sample outcrops in northern Ontario, Donovan went on to earn his undergraduate degree in the Lassonde Mineral Engineering program. Today he serves as president and director of White Gold Corp.
Like his father before him, Donovan made the most of his time at Skule™ and encourages students to embrace opportunities to expand their horizons and stay involved in a variety of ways. He participated in Skule™ Night, played in the Lady Godiva Memorial Band, was active in Min Club, and captained the Mining Games team for several years. He took the field course at Camp on Gull Lake near Minden, Ont. — a two-week practical exercise he describes as a formative experience in teamwork and self-knowledge — and came away with friendships that have lasted into his professional life.
The scholarship: looking for Canada’s future builders
The Murray H. Pollitt Engineering Leadership Scholarship is, in many ways, a portrait of its namesake; it is not designed primarily to reward the student at the top of the grade list. Murray was not a man who measured worth by credentials alone. He measured it by what people built and how they led.
Accordingly, the scholarship is open to third- and fourth-year students in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering who combine solid academic standing with demonstrated qualities of leadership and character — particularly those shown through extracurricular involvement on campus and in the community. Special consideration is given to students who have shown an entrepreneurial interest in engineering-driven sectors such as innovation, energy, mining or manufacturing, or who have taken their education beyond the classroom through engineering design projects and competitions.
Recipients must be Canadian citizens or permanent residents — a detail that would have pleased Murray, who was a proud and sometimes fierce advocate for Canadian companies and the Canadian workers who built them. The first recipient of the Murray H. Pollitt Engineering Leadership Scholarship is anticipated to be announced in fall 2026.
